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Acknowledgments Dark Age Bodies was made possible by a generous grant from the National Humanities Center (2004–5), the academy’s best monastery. Special thanks go to the prior of the NHC, Kent R. Mullikin, who has a secret fondness for Hrabanus Maurus and his liturgical style. This Arkansas ascetic would not have survived the year without the extraordinary labors of the monks of the Research Triangle, especially Marie Brubaker and Sarah Payne. The custodians of the NHC scriptorium, Eliza Robertson and Jean Houston, were indispensible to the research phase of this project. The eccentricities of my Dark Age body history simply must be blamed on the wayward participants in the NHC Sex and Gender Seminar. Sections of this book made their first appearance at the following venues. Gregory Hays and Paul Kershaw hosted me at the Medieval Circle of the University of Virginia. Mathilde van Dijk and Jitse Dijkstra asked me to participate in a colloquium held at the University of Groningen on Egyptian hagiography in the medieval West. Julia Smith invited me to give a plenary address at the Women’s History Network meeting held at the University of Glasgow. Conversations with specialists at these gatherings significantly enriched my work, and my hosts were welcoming and supportive. My colleagues at Arkansas Tricia Starks and Robert Finlay patiently read this book, from its first draft to its subsequent revisions. My fellow medievalists Elizabeth Markham and Rembrandt Wolpert offered exceptional guidance on the interplay among body, chant, and architectural space. Anthropologist JoAnn D’Alisera enhanced the ritual and spatial contexts of Chapter 3. My co-traveler in the world of medieval bodies and medieval spaces, architectural historian Kim Sexton, has left her mark on this book both through her graceful photography and her expert instruction on early medieval buildings on location in Italy, France, and Germany. Arkansas classicist Dave Fredrick’s insights into Roman sex and gender are scattered throughout Dark Age Bodies. Dean Bob McMath of the Honors College at 390 acknowledgments the University of Arkansas made such pilgrimages possible, and Dean Bill Schwab of the Fulbright College of Arts and Sciences helped pay the costs of including visuals. Other friends and historians in Arkansas and beyond have been essential to the book’s completion: John Arnold, Aneilya Barnes, Dru Burtz, Derek Everett, Val Garver, Lynn Jacobs, Beth Juhl, Natalie Hall, Brent Harbaugh, Nathan Howard, Jeremy Hyman, Susan Laningham, Suzanne McCray, Natalie Molineaux, Annette Morrow, Charles Muntz, William Quinn, Elizabeth Payne, Mike Pierce, Martha Rampton, Jane Schulenburg, Beth Schweiger, Kathy Sloan, Laura Smoller, Rick Sonn, John Terry, Adelheid Voskuhl, Elliott West, and Patrick Williams. The women of history in Old Main 416, Brenda Foster, Jane Rone and Jeanne Short, assisted enormously with the final preparation of the manuscript and endured the various panics of its author. Among the ranks of the Carolingianists, Eric Goldberg critiqued thoroughly my chapter on Hrabanus Maurus, and Janet Nelson lent her exacting eye to ‘‘Gendering the Plan of Saint Gall.’’ I owe these superb scholars a great deal. The two readers for the University of Pennsylvania Press, William Diebold and Julia Smith, gave Dark Age Bodies the kind of reading most of us desire but never receive. I consider myself fortunate to have had such meticulous reviews of my work by these two experts in the field. All infelicities of style or errors in fact are obviously my own. Tom Noble, who publicly professes that he never taught me that ‘‘gender stuff,’’ remains a most loyal and encouraging mentor. Jerome Singerman of the University of Pennsylvania Press has been unflagging in his enthusiastic support of this book. Closer to home here in the Ozarks, Dark Age Bodies could come into being only with the pious care of Eric N. Coon. This book is dedicated to Suzanne, who is missed. ...

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